The Uninvited

WRITER'S NOTE: The following review will dip very much into spoiler territory, so those of you who do not wish to know much about the plot or the surprises therein should most likely read this after seeing the film.

Right from the early moments of The Uninvited, something seemed a little off to me. The first sign is that its heroine, a teenager named Anna (Emily Browning), is in a mental hospital. Anyone who has ever watched a thriller where the main character has been institutionalized knows that the remainder of the movie will force us to ask if that character is crazy or not. Wether what he or she is experiencing is real or all in their head. Seeing this right at the beginning of the film made me know that I should not believe everything that I was about to see, as I was certain the movie was going to be trying to throw me off every chance it got.

I was right. The Uninvited wants so much to trick us, it seems almost like an obsession on the part of the screenwriters. But it doesn't do a very good job. Once you understand the movie's motives to throw you curves, it's all too easy to figure out what lies ahead. Anna is picked up by her widower father, Steven (David Strathaim), and brought home. We learn there was a fire roughly a year ago that claimed the life of Anna's mother, who was terminally ill. Anna doesn't remember the details of what happened that night (another red flag), but her doctor has assured her it's time for her to go on with her life and "finish what she started", as he puts it. Anna returns home to find that her dad is already in the process of moving on with his life. For the past couple months, he's been dating Rachael (Elizabeth Banks), the woman who was previously the live-in nurse when her mom was still alive, and has since been helping him cope. Anna eyes her suspiciously, however. Why shouldn't she? Almost every line of dialogue Rachael says is written in such a way to sound innocent, but to easily have sinister undertones. Her lingering and shadowy glances she constantly makes don't help either. And yet, it all seemed too obvious. Like the movie wanted desperately for me to believe that Rachael was up to no good. I just knew it wasn't what it looked like.

Anna's only source of comfort at home comes from her sister, Alex (Arielle Kebbel). She's not crazy about dad's new girlfriend either, and even has thoughts that Rachael may have caused the fire that killed their mother. Anna's been having some spooky visions when she sleeps that seem to back up this theory. She's haunted by the twisted corpse of her mother who screams "murderer", and she also keeps on seeing three creepy ghost children who seem to be trying to warn her about something concerning her future stepmom. The sisters do an internet search, and immediately find some information on an unsolved murder case that may have ties to Rachael. While I was being fed all this information, there was something lingering in the back of my mind the entire time. Why is it that Alex was never seen anywhere except with Anna? Why is it that none of the other family members were addressing the sister directly, or even acknowledging her when she was around? Why is it that Alex conveniently steps away right before someone approaches Anna? When Alex has been injured and Anna goes to talk to the police about it, why did the officer give her such a strange look when she said Alex's name?

The Uninvited wants us to be deceived, but doesn't cover its tracks very well. The movie is well made on a technical level, I guess. The performances are better than the norm, and the cinematography is strong, but so what? If we can figure out what surprises lie in store within the first 15 minutes of the film, there's little to look forward to. This is a movie that still thinks its being clever long after we've figured it out. It's like watching a magic act where the magician doesn't even try to cover up how he's pulling it off, but goes on pretending that he is. We're left to wait for the movie to catch up with us. When it does, it's terribly anti climactic. I didn't want to be right, but as the ending unfolded, it was revealed I had made most of the right assumptions. What I didn't see coming was the bad laugh the movie ends on, when we learn the name of a fellow inmate at the hospital Anna was staying at in the opening of the movie. When the name of this seemingly insignificant patient was revealed, a groan was heard in the audience. I wanted to join that individual.

It should be noted that The Uninvited is a remake of a 2004 film from Korea called A Tale of Two Sisters. It's not a very good one, at that. The original was a subtle and tragic story of loss, while the 2009 model is an all-too-obvious psycho thriller that is very unsatisfying. It's bombastic, and seems to have been made with a narrow-minded goal to have the audience smack their heads, dumbfounded over how clever the movie was and how it pulled one over on us. A movie should always be built around an idea, not a desperate attempt at a specific reaction from the audience. And if the idea for your movie is "let's take a smart and subtle film, strip it of its subtlety, and dumb it down", it's probably not a good idea to start with.

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